According to information received, the Georgian State Bank remained in Georgia with a full complement of qualified personnel and with deposits from foreign missions. If this is correct, it is necessary to preserve the bank as a credit apparatus for foreign trade and, perhaps, to transform it into a bank for the entire Caucasus in connection with the projected economic unification of the Caucasian republics.

Abroad, frenzied agitation is being conducted against the RSFSR in connection with the sovietization of Georgia, particularly by Martov, Tsereteli, and others. It is necessary that the Georgian Revolutionary Committee conduct serious counter-agitation, which should emphasize, first, the peace-making role of the RSFSR, second, the active and initiative role of the Georgian workers, peasants, and army masses who overthrew the Georgian bourgeois government, and, third, the role of the Azerbaijani and Armenian Soviet governments, which supported insurgents — both Armenian and Tatar as well as Georgian — for the purpose of self-defense against the aggressive steps of the Georgian bourgeois government, which formed Azerbaijani and Armenian bourgeois governments in Tiflis for the purpose of an internal explosion of the Soviet regime in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Carefully gather materials against the Menshevik Georgian government and bring them with you to Moscow for the plenum.

Lenin

written in the hand of N. S. Alliluyeva

Written April 18, 1921

Sent to Erivan

First published in 1945

in Lenin Miscellany XXXV

Printed from a copy